Category Archives: Over the Transom

The Return of Blue Clock Socks

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It’s been a while since I mentioned blue clock socks, but the time has come again. I must have worn out the blue clock socks I mentioned nearly a decade ago (Aug 6 and Aug 7, 2006). Or they simply disappeared. That’s the fate of socks. They go from the dryer to the alternate reality where socks go, beyond the ken of humanity. Was that what Zaphod Beeblebrox posited, or was it missing pens? I don’t feel like looking it up.

blue clock soxAnyway, it comes to mind because I bought some more recently. Inexpensive socks on sale that surely won’t last, but I’m fond of blue clock socks because of the first paragraph of The Big Sleep.

“It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it.”

Dog vs. Rabbit

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After a recent rain, the dog was really eager to go into the back yard, so before long I opened the door for her. Just then I noticed a rabbit idling on the grass near the back fence, which is fairly far from the door. Instantly the dog dashed out and made a beeline — which really ought to be a dogline — toward the rabbit.

For a long instant, the rabbit seemed to notice nothing. At least, it didn’t move. At what seemed like (to me) the last possible moment, the rabbit took off in the direction of the fence, which has undergrowth obscuring much of it this time of the year, and both dashing animals, smaller and larger, disappeared into the greenery.

About five seconds later, the dog emerged empty-mouthed. The dog was fast; the rabbit faster.

Minor Postcard Mystery

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When at Half Price Books on Friday, the girls each picked up a book and I came across a box of 10 postcards. Not just any cards, but 9½ x 3¾-inch color glossy shots depicting New York City. The printing’s high quality, though the image selections are standard: the skyline from various vantages, the Empire State Building, Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge, and of course the Statue of Liberty.

“Of course” because the set was originally sold by the Statue of Liberty Gift Center. The box says so. All in all, not best cards I’ve ever bought, but certainly worth the modest price that Half Price Books wanted. I didn’t open the box until I got home. Until last night, in fact.

Then I discovered that the cards were a lot more interesting than I thought. Four out of the 10 cards were already addressed and stamped, with messages written. One was addressed and stamped, but with no message. Five were blank. What a find.

For some reason, the person who (presumably) bought the cards at the Statue of Liberty took the trouble to compose the messages and prepare to mail the cards — and then didn’t, either through forgetfulness, or a change of heart, wanting to keep them after all. That was at least 10 years ago. The writer didn’t date any of them, but cards like this demand first-class postage, and she put 37¢ stamps on them. That was the rate from June 2002 to January 2006.

The signature name is a woman’s name, but the writing implies a young woman, maybe even a teenager. She seems to have been visiting a relative in New York — there’s mention of a cousin — and she also relates on more than one card that, “I went up to our room, and the bed broke! It was really funny…” Besides that, she saw the Statue of Liberty, a beach somewhere, and Boston.

Four of the cards are addressed to a western suburb of Chicago, one to Pennsylvania. In the fullness of time, I plan to add the necessary 12¢ to each card, and send them from neither metro Chicago nor New York. Even if none of the people on cards are  there any more — and it’s entirely likely that some are — someone will get each card. It will add another layer to the mystery of why there were never sent, and why, if kept as souvenirs, they were at Half Price Books.

Coins from Way Down South

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Hard to believe Canada Day’s rolled around again. Time to honor our neighbors up north by watching one of their major cultural achievements. Other episodes are also available on YouTube.

Lilly brought us souvenirs from her trip to Latin America — omiyagi, to use the Japanese term, which means souvenirs specially obtained for people who didn’t make the trip. It’s a custom we follow.

She got me three things, all showing that she knows her dad pretty well: coins, postcards and Ecuadorean chocolate. As it happens, both Ecuador and Panama are dollarized economies. No currency exchange was necessary; she took greenback cash and also withdrew funds, in dollars, from an ATM.

The small change is each country’s own. This is 50 centavos from Ecuador, obverse.

50 centavos, EcuadorIt features the face of one José Eloy Alfaro Delgado (1842-1912), who was president of Ecuador from 1895 to 1901 and from 1906 to 1911, and had the distinction of being assassinated by anti-secularizers, since he introduced the likes of civil marriage and divorce, and secular eduction, to his nation. He also oversaw the construction of the Ferrocarril Transandino (Trans-Andean Railroad) connecting Guayaquil and Quito.

The reserve.

50 centavos, EcuadorThe steel Ecuadorean coins are made at mints in Canada and Mexico. Other denominations include 25c, 10c, 5c, and (supposedly) 1c. Lilly brought back the first three of that list, and along with the 50c piece, I checked their sizes. They’re exactly the same size as their respective U.S. coins.

Apparently Ecuador doesn’t issue dollar coins. Lilly said that U.S. dollar coins are in circulation there much more than they are in the United States. If we’d known that, I’d have given her a roll or two of dollar coins to take with her.

Panama, on the other hand, does have its own dollar-equivalent coin, the bimetallic balboa, which Lilly tells me circulates with U.S. dollar coins.

one balboaWho else to put on the balboa than Balboa? The man who lost his head over Panama. Here’s something I didn’t know: there’s a crater on the Moon named for him. He might have made it to the Pacific, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t get that far.

The reverse.

balboaIt’s hard to see, but the coat of arms of Panama includes a depiction of the isthmus, a sword, rifle, shovel, hoe, and more. The eagle is specifically — according to recent Panamanian law — a harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja), the national bird. The impossible-to-read motto is Pro Mundi Beneficio, for the benefit of the world.

Thursday Scraps

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Last year my part of the suburbs was lousy with skunks. For whatever ecological reasons, the population was up — so much so that both Lilly and I saw them prowling the streets at night.

This year, not so much. This year, it’s rabbits. Yesterday I looked out my office window, which faces my front yard, and saw two, each helping to trim the lawn. I’ve seen single rabbits frequently in both yards, and in parks, but never two at the same time.

rabbits June 2015The dog would have had a barking fit if she’d seen them. But she didn’t.

Not long ago I woke up thinking, why are sidekicks just for superheroes and singing cowboys? Why not for other, less fictional occupations? Some examples:

Ben Smith, CPA, and his sidekick Tuck.
Deepak Patal, Ph.D., and his sidekick Hadji
President Clinton and her sidekick Slick (still hypothetical)

Earlier this month I was driving west on North Ave. in Glendale Heights, Ill., which is a western suburb, and decided I needed to go east, so I turned north on Glen Ellyn Rd. to find a convenient place to turn around. And then I discovered Easy Street. So I drove down Easy Street, just to get a look at the houses of the people who Live on Easy Street. More carports than usual in the Chicago suburbs, but other than that it looked fairly ordinary.

Occasionally, as in once every few years, the urge to listen to early ’80s German-language rock ‘n’ roll is just too strong to resist. We all feel that way. No? Well, I feel that way now and then, and the Spider Murphy Gang is just the thing for it. There’s always “Schickeria.” or “Skandal im Sperrbezirk.”

Ants!

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Ah, spring. When ants scurry through vast cities and elk eat weeds. We took a walk in the Ned Brown Forest Preserve (Busse Woods) on Saturday, among the flush of new green trees and carpets of light purple flowers in the undergrowth (phlox? They have five petals). Just next to the paved path I noticed the largest ant hill I’ve ever seen, distinguished by dark earth a bit darker even than the surrounding rich Illinois soil.

It had a rectangular shape, about 10 feet by four: 40 square feet of ant hill surface. Puny by world standards, but still big. A close look revealed a multitude of active mid-sized black ants. I don’t know exactly what kind, but does that matter? (They’re all bent on world domination.) Someone had put three footprints in the ant hill, probably just to stir up the ants. The ants marched through the foot-sized depressions without any trouble.

Wonder how deep it went. If a cursory investigation’s any indication, a fair ways down. Something I didn’t know existed: ant hill casts.

Other insects are emerging. The season’s first mosquito landed on my arm. It was sluggish, and in a moment I snuffed out whatever existence it enjoyed as a mosquito. But more of its ilk will soon be on the wing. At Busse Woods in particular, which is marshy in a lot of places, and sporting a lot of puddles, since it’s been raining nearly every other day lately.

We saw larger creatures too. Elk Grove Village maintains a small herd of elk in a large fenced enclosure near the intersection of Arlington Heights Road and Higgins Road. Usually they’re off in the distance, but on Saturday they were near the fence and easy to see: three males with short horns still, three females. Mostly going about ruminant business. They seem fond of dandelions.

Thursday Squibs

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Sometimes at the bank I get a roll of dollar coins, which totals 25 all together. These days, most of them are presidential dollars, though some Sacagaweas and Susies are usually mixed in. Since the presidents after Garfield have relatively low mintage — Garfield had a total of 74.2 million from both mints, while Arthur had only about 10 million — it’s rare to see one of the later presidents. This week, a TR coin turned up (one of 9.2 million minted) in a roll. In worn condition. Odd.

“What’s syncopation?” Lilly asked recently. Being in band, I thought she’d know that. Maybe not. I learned about it in high school, but when she asked I realized I’d forgotten how to describe it. Just what YouTube is for: this is a lucid explanation, and he even makes Philip Glass a little more interesting.

In line at a grocery store the other day, a man behind me was carrying on a vigorous conversation on his phone. Nothing unusual about that anymore, unlike the day in 1989 when I saw a woman pull a brick of a phone from her purse at the McDonald’s that used to be on the Mag Mile and start talking into it. Overhearing one side of a call these days might even be annoying, depending on the conversation.

I couldn’t pin down his language. It didn’t quite sound like Russian, but it was some kind of Slavic tongue. Maybe Ukrainian. Anyway, he had a good voice, so I listened. There wasn’t much else to do in line anyway. Then I started to notice: talktalktalktalk OK talktalktalk OK talktalktalktalktalktalktalk OK talktalktalktalktalktalk OK.

I know OK is practically universal. (Or do the French resist?) That wasn’t a surprise. Still, I marveled that a bit of 1830s American slang, whose origin even now isn’t quite certain, has traveled so far. So naturally did he use the word, it might as well have been native from his point of view.

New fact for the day (a couple of weeks ago for me, when I learned it): Neil Diamond wrote “Red, Red Wine.” A strange notion at first, but then again he’s written other songs with an alcohol motif. Then I learned that that’s his actual birth name: Neil Diamond, son of Akeeba and Rose Diamond of Brooklyn. It always sounded like a stage name to me.

In Branson in 2012 I met a fellow whose act was a Neil Diamond impersonation (tribute, as they say). He had the enormous mane and the good looks of young Neil Diamond, but I didn’t get to hear whether he had similarly impressive pipes. I’d hope so.

The last episode of Mad Men is on Sunday. A lot of shows now have last episodes, so it isn’t quite like the novelty of watching the end of The Fugitive (which I don’t remember) or even, come to think of it, The Mary Tyler Moore Show (which I do). Here’s an interesting essay about final shows, though maybe covering something that doesn’t really deserve an essay, namely the last episode of Hogan’s Heroes.

Still, I’ll be watching Mad Men. If only to see whether Roger Sterling gets one more funny line or scene.

Thursday Olio

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A recent sunset. Still pre-leaf.

Torches Light the Western Sky March 2015Not long ago I overheard two young women ahead of me in line. A bit of their talk went like this, more or less.

The One: Don’t end up being the stupid girl with the stupid tattoo.

The Other: Only one friend of mine has a tattoo, Sonya, and she’s the stupidest person I know.

One: Why are you friends with her?

Other: Well, our great-grandparents were in a displaced persons camp together, and our families have been friends ever since.

DogThe other day I wondered what dogs would come up with as their traditional measuring system. Or at least some dogs — say, the dogs of the British Isles, which they later took to many parts of the world. Provided, of course, dogs could do that kind of abstract reasoning. Assume they can for a moment.

Let’s stick with units of length. The paw would be the basic unit. Four paws to a snout, eight paws to a tail (four is important to dogs; in fact, they use Base 4 for counting). A dog mile — I don’t have a word for that yet — would be 800 tails. What would these be in human measurement? I don’t feel the need to work that out just now.

In modern usage, the snout’s mostly obsolete. And the rest of the traditional measurements are in danger of disappearing. During the revolution, Jacobin dogs in France came up with lengths supposedly based on 1/4,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the North Pole, but I’ll leave that for another time.

The Latest in Cuckoo Clocks

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The great melt is under way, at least on my property. The back yard, which is a southern exposure, is mostly a mud flat now, with rims of snow. The dog is happy to explore it, and then report back to us, carrying mud specimens with her for our floor, clothes, etc. Even the front yard, with its northern exposure, is beginning to reveal itself again. I’m curious to see how my exercise in green yard management is going. That is, I didn’t rake leaves last fall. They’ve been decaying in place since then, in theory providing nutrients for the grass this spring.

Some time ago, I wrote about the Batman Express (italics from the original source material): “It’s an HO-scale train set that ‘is powerfully embellished with dramatic full-color artwork by some of DC Comics greatest artists,’ according to the letter. ‘You’ll thrill to each outstanding portrait of Batman as he battles his arch villains including The Joker and Catwoman.’ … That’s the world of collectibles, I figure. Anything goes with anything, if it sells…”

I’m reminded of that again. This time, a print ad that recently wandered into the house informs me that it’s “Time to Celebrate the Chicago Blackhawks® Championship Legacy!” And how so? “Now, you can demonstrate your team pride any time of the day with the Chicago Blackhawks® Cuckoo Clock.” Limited edition (of course), so get yours now. The earliest orders will receive the coveted low edition numbers! (Who indeed would want clock 9995 out of 10,000?) For some reason, the ad emphasizes that the clock is 2 Feet High!

Clearly, it’s a special clock. Done up in red and black, with the Blackhawk mascot painted on it, hockey sticks for weights, and a cuckoo that wears a hockey helmet. It can be yours for only five convenient installments of $39.99, for a total of $199.95.* Asterisk = $23.99 shipping and service. Limit one per order. By golly, who can resist all that?

The Oak Park Love Locks

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Lilly sometimes studies at the other desk in my office. This evening the object of her studies was various bones, for her anatomy class (I’m pretty sure that subject wasn’t offered at my bronze-age high school). I suggested that she can learn bones listening to “Dry Bones.” She’s used to this kind of suggestion.

On Friday, I was briefly in Oak Park. But long enough to take a look at the Oak Park Love Locks.

Oak Park Jan 30, 2015They are at the Metra and El line underpass on Oak Park Ave. They’re a little thin on this side of the underpass (the south side), but thicker on the north side, where there was also a lot less light.

A helpful sign posted by the Oak Park Area Arts Council says, in part: “On a bridge over the river Seine in Paris, lovers write their names and dates on padlocks, attach them to the rails, and throw the padlock key into the river to symbolize their commitment. The locks form a colorful, metallic tapestry that testifies to the power of undying love.

“As part of The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park’s Hemingway Birthday Celebration, we are bringing this part of Paris to Oak Park and inviting the community to create its own statement of romance.”

Something about this cries out to be mocked. According to some sources, Parisians aren’t particularly fond of this practice, which isn’t very old either — certainly nothing Hemingway had anything to do with. And while bridges on the Seine might inspire romance, a dimly lit concrete-and-steel underpass in suburban Chicago doesn’t have any of that vibe. Also — just to note — the thing is sponsored by a major padlock maker. Bet they have romance in their corporate heart.

If the Arts Council really wants to bring some of Hemingway’s Paris to the 21st century Midwest, I have a few suggestions: cafes and zinc bars with subsidized drinks, so they’re cheap like Paris in the ’20s; a bookstore that looks exactly like Shakespeare and Company; and a statue of the gentlemen who invented pharmacy.